Of All Time
by MagicalBackwave
Summary: Sometimes wishes can be taken too seriously. When young eleven-year-old Harry wishes that his parents were alive because he believed they'd be his friends, Harry unknowingly finds himself in 1971, living with Lily Evans, who believes him to be her cousin. With Harry believing the same thing, the story of Lily and the Marauders takes a bit of a different turn.


**A/n: It starts off as a little mix between The Letters from No-One, the movie version of the seashack, and a little bit of original dribble. So keep reading through the parts that are taken from the book. There are little changes in there! :)**

Of All Time

Chapter 1

Make A Wish, Harry

* * *

It'd become an incredibly long week for a boy named Harry Potter, who was becoming increasingly desperate to find out exactly why someone was trying to write him and why they had made so many copies of what he assumed would be the same letter over and over again. Or how they seemed to know exactly where Harry was, no matter where Uncle Vernon dragged them off to. Whoever it was clearly had no idea that'd they'd driven his Uncle way off the reservation. After a week of multiplying letters, that came even after his Uncle boarded up the house as though preparing for a hurricane (somehow being carefully placed into eggs and the final straw coming when they'd started shooting out of the fireplace as though at war with the house), they'd found their way to a dreary looking hotel on the edge of a big town where they'd finally stopped for the night. After the owner of the hotel informed them that even more letters had arrived for Harry, Uncle Vernon took once again to driving off and finding another obscure place to stay.

That's how Harry found himself in the most miserable shack you could possibly imagine on some dismal little rock formation out at sea. The day before his birthday no less. Not that his birthdays mattered to anyone except himself. Harry was certain that he'd only been told what day his birthday was because he'd been nearby when his school teachers had directly asked the Dursleys when it was when he was signed up for school.

"Could do with some of those letters now, couldn't we boy?" Uncle Vernon said cheerfully. Harry blinked and focused his attention on his Uncle just in case he was supposed to actually answer. Uncle Vernon was too busy trying to start a fire with empty chips bags and banana peels to notice Harry's intensely hateful gaze. Eventually Harry just sighed and took to sitting as far away from the other Dursleys as physically possible. Obviously, his Uncle believed that he'd won the battle against the mysterious letters and their sender, that the chance of anyone finding them on the tiny island was incredibly slim. Harry privately agreed, though the thought didn't cheer him up any at all.

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

Eventually everyone was asleep except Harry, who, not for the first time, thought about what it would be like if he lived with anyone but the Dursleys. Perhaps they would let him eat whatever he wanted, and wouldn't treat him like a slave, and would acknowledge with hugs and cake instead of grunts and old socks. Perhaps they would let Harry have his own friends (Harry was half-positive the his Aunt and Uncle had given Dudley the task of making sure that being friends with Harry came with consequences). Harry would give anything just to have one friend.

But no, Harry's parents had died and he had landed with the awful Dursleys, who hated both Harry _and_ his parents for reasons that they were lying to him about. Because to hear Aunt Petunia say it, his parents had been hopeless, jobless, drunken good-for-nothings who had the misfortune of having him and then ungratefully dying in a drunk driving accident that stuck Harry with them. Uncle Vernon would always go on to play up the whole "we were gracious enough to allow you to stay with us" when Harry knew that all he wanted to was throw him to an orphanage. They wouldn't even tell Harry what his parents names were. But Harry knew that they were lying to him for the sole reason that whenever Aunt Petunia was forced to talk about her sister (which was rare because Harry had stopped asking), her yelling would always be laced in what Harry thought was an undisguised jealous tone. And despite not being completely familiar to the emotion himself, Harry was certain that people were not supposed to be jealous of hopeless, jobless, drunken good-for-nothings.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the went on. Harry still hadn't managed to fall asleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick closer wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter was now. Most of all, wondering if he'd ever be able to make a friend of his own.

Five minutes to go. Harry absentmindedly drew a birthday cake on the dusty floor, in place of the lack of a real one. Hopefully, a miracle would happen and his wish would come true. Maybe only a miserable person could have the wish actually work. Four minutes to go. Maybe there would be so many letters back in Privet Drive that he'd be able to steal one somehow. Three minutes to go. Harry thought carefully on how to word his wish. Two minutes. He wondered if there were any other ways that he could get away from the Dursleys.

One minute to go and Harry would be eleven. Thirty seconds... Twenty... Ten... Nine- Maybe he'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him- Three... Two... One... Dudley's watch flashed midnight.

"Make a wish, Harry," he muttered to himself and blew out the candles he drew on the dust cake. _I wish that I could know my parents, that they, at least, could be my friends._ He sighed dejectedly, already guessing that this wish was just a fools hope. He wiped away the evidence that he was thinking about his birthday and laid back down on the floor. After vaguely noticing that the loud storm had dissipated into an unnatural quiet, Harry finally managed to fall asleep, once again wondering if he'd ever be able to escape the Dursleys.

* * *

"Wake up, cousin!" Harry groaned as someone jumped onto his bed and started shaking him awake. Two thoughts disoriented him. One, he was now in a bed when he'd been so sure that'd he been sleeping on a hard floor when he'd gone to bed. Two, the voice was not Dudley's mocking and cold tone but a friendly and warm girl's voice. That caused another thought to go off inside his head, one that was asking why he thought it was Dudley waking him up when Harry only saw him these days when his family got together for the winter holidays.

"C'mon Harry! It's your birthday! We've given you plenty of time to sleep in," the voice called again. Harry realized that the mystery person wasn't about to leave him alone, so he groaned once more before opening his and looking around. His head once again filled up with conflicting thoughts as he looked around the unfamiliar yet incredibly familiar room. It was a simple bedroom complete with everything that bedrooms normally had within it, all colored in various shades of blue or wood. With a jolt, Harry realized that it was _his_ room. Which seemed like a really strange thing to think, as Harry had been using the same bedroom for the past four years ever since Aunt Petunia had forced him on his other Aunt when Harry started being able to make weird things happen like his cousin Lily. And Aunt Petunia was a strict hater of anything, in her words, freakish and unnatural.

Harry turned his attention to the girl that once again to him a moment to place. She was obviously his age, with long, dark red hair and bright green eyes that Harry knew mirrored his own. She was still kneeling next him and shaking him awake with a small grin on her slightly freckled face. The name came a few seconds later. Lily Evans. Named after her own mother's other sister Lily, who had vanished a long time before Harry had been born and was assumed to be dead. Obviously, she hadn't died before Harry was born but gone off and gotten married to some Potter fellow. They'd still died when Harry was one which was how Harry had ended up with Aunt Petunia, who'd simply been the older of the two sisters.

"Harry? Are you alright?" Harry blinked. He'd been staring at Lily for longer than necessary without actually saying anything. He'd been too busy trying to sort out the random memories of him and Lily playing together during the holidays and around the house since he came to live with him. He shook his head, annoyed that he seemed to be so out of it today.

"Headache," Harry told her simply. It was coming on strong as jumbled memories continued to flash across his mind. These memories concerned the Dursleys and how they'd treated him. Yes, they'd given Dudley a lot more attention than they'd given him (Harry got the impression that Aunt Petunia hadn't really gotten along with her sisters), but they'd never locked him up in a broom cupboard. And when the strange things started happening around Harry, the Dursleys had simply pawned him off on Aunt Christine, not gone out of their way to make him miserable.

Lily was looking at him with concern, so Harry finally forced himself back into the present instead of what may or may not have happened.

"Well, maybe you just need to wake up a little," Lily said, sliding off his bed and trying to pull him with her. Harry scowled at her earning an amused giggle from the redheaded girl. Shouldn't he be the one that was more excited for his eleventh birthday? _Stupid headache..._

"Alright, alright! I'm getting up Lil," Harry said, standing up and stretching out a little bit. "But, I'm going to take a shower before I come down for cake!" Smirking at Lily's small gasp of protest, Harry strode out of his room to the bathroom, growing a little concerned by the fact that the house still seemed slightly unfamiliar.

"Fine, but don't take too long!" Lily shouted after him.

A nice hot shower did seem to do the trick for his headache and as he made his way down the stairs he didn't feel quite so lost in his own home. He quickly identified Lily's parents as his Aunt Christine and Uncle Michael, which gave Harry a relieved feeling. He wasn't losing his memories after all. Looking at the three of them together as they were, one might not know they were related at first. Harry remembered that running joke they had when people asked if Lily was also adopted to which the response was always that Lily had just won the recessive gene jackpot. She'd been the first one with red hair and green eyes in her mother's family in several generations. They'd thought her the only one with the emerald green eyes until Harry had shown up with them as well.

Aunt Christine had the motherly look going for her. She could be considered neither thin nor chubby but a sort of middle ground between the two and wasn't particularly tall at all. Her light brown hair was cut above her shoulders and was usually curled into ringlets towards the front of her head. She had deep blue eyes that always seemed to twinkle when she was amused or happy. Uncle Michael, likewise, had a definite stern look about him, although it was usually just a show for his job. His darker brown was usually kept very short and flat to his head and he also had a pair of blue eyes.

Along with Lily, there was a forth person sitting at the table. Even sitting down Harry could tell that the black haired woman was tall. She had a very stern face and Harry knew instantly that she wasn't a person that should be crossed. She was also wearing what he figured were dark blue robes. _Who's this? _Harry thought to himself before it clicked. _Oh. OH! This must be that magic official that... boy was talking about._ The woman looked his way as he entered the room.

"Ah, you must Mr. Potter?" Harry nodded. "Excellent. Miss Evans here said that we simply must wait for you to be here for this." Harry detected a small hint of a smile on the woman's face as she looked towards Lily, who had flushed a deep red.

"Well, Harry's magic too," Lily said defensively. "He should be here for this."

"I don't doubt your claim, Miss Evans," the woman stated softly. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Professor Minevra McGonagall. I teach Transfiguration at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Transfiguration?"

"Its a type of magic that that changes one thing to another," Lily said before Professor McGonagall could say anything. Lily flushed red again but continued on. "Could you show us that spell again, please?" Professor McGonagall did smile this time, and before Harry knew it, the chair had been about to sit down in had changed into a little beagle dog that pranced around and barked a few times before being changed back. Harry stared in awe as his Aunt, Uncle and Lily clapped appreciatively at the Professors spell work.

Professor McGonagall went on to explain why she had come to visit them, telling them about how some witches and wizards were Muggle-born (no magical parents) and that a magic representative was supposed to come and introduce magic to the family, which they'd already known, or at least Harry and Lily had. His Aunt and Uncle seemed generally surprised at the news, although Harry suspected that they'd had at least had an idea of the strange things that happened around them. She then went on to briefly explain the other branches of magic (Charms, Potions, Herbology etc.) to them before finally handing Lily her Hogwarts letter. Harry was a little confused when he didn't get one of his own.

"Now, Mr. Potter, I'm afraid I don't have an admittance letter for you at the moment," Professor McGonagall said, turning to look at him. Harry felt himself pale a little bit in alarm, but the professor held up a hand before he or Lily, who'd dropped her letter in shock as well, could protest. "Don't look so worried, Mr. Potter. It isn't so uncommon that Hogwarts misses an occasional student, especially if he or she was born where another magical school would have enrolled you. I've been told that your Aunt and Uncle really don't know the circumstances of your birth and that could be the reason for it as well. Now, there are a few tests that could prove that you are indeed a wizard, but I believe a simpler way would be to show me something you can do. Can you-"

"OH! Harry show her the nightlight!" Lily exclaimed instantly.

"Nightlight? I didn't know you slept with a nightlight Harry," Aunt Christine said, giving Harry what he figured was a reassuring look that clearly stated 'why didn't you tell me you were scared of the dark?' Harry turned red and scowled at Lily.

"No mum! I use it to read or draw under the covers when it gets dark out," Harry groaned out exasperatedly. "It's more like a flashlight."

"Can you show me, Mr. Potter?" Harry nodded and then concentrated on the little of ball of light he used to light his room up. After a few moments, Harry's hand began to light up and suddenly he had a light the size of a ping-pong ball sitting in his once empty hand. He heard his Aunt and Uncle gasp and Harry turned to see them watching him with a curious expression on their faces. He tossed the ball to Professor McGonagall, who caught it and rolled it around with her fingers before handing it back to Harry.

"Wait, is this the light that I've been seeing under your door for the past couple years?" Aunt Christine said, giving Harry an amused yet annoyed glare. Harry turned red again, but simply nodded. "That explains a lot. I could never find the flashlight in your room. I guess I'll never be able to take it from you either." Lily giggled and once again he saw the makings a minuscule smile on the professor's face. Harry shyly smiled back, and then placed the ball between his thumb and pointer finger and held it above his head. He let go after a moment of concentrating and the ball stayed in place.

"I've gotten better at being able to keep it floating for a while so I can draw without it getting in the way."

"It changes colors too!" Lily shouted, running around the table to Harry's side. She poked the ball with her finger and closed her eyes. After a moment, it changed to match his and Lily's eye color. Lily smiled triumphantly. Harry let the ball drop back into his hand and tossed it to Uncle Michael, who played with it for a moment before handing it to Aunt Christine. She closed her eyes for a moment, but the ball did not change colors. Lily giggled again when her mother seemed to sigh in disappointment. She leaned in to whisper something in her mother's ear, who whispered something back. Suddenly the ball turned violet. "Way to go mom!"

Uncle Michael laughed as he playfully nudged his wife, joking about how he'd always known she was a witch. He got a good shoulder slap out of that. Aunt Christine turned to Harry and winked. He shook his head with a smile before breaking his concentration on the ball. It dissipated in her hand. Harry turned back to Professor McGonagall.

"Was that proof enough, Professor?" Harry smiled proudly when the witch gave him a firm nod and a true smile this time.

"Yes, Mr. Potter. That was quite the impressive display. I have a couple more Muggle-Born families that I need to inform today, but after that I shall talk to Professor Dumbledore - he's the headmaster at Hogwarts- about your situation. Don't worry if you don't get your own letter by the time I come back to take you to Diagon Alley. Everything you need to buy won't be any different from Miss Evans list. Oh!" Professor McGonagall exclaimed, seemingly remembering that she may have gotten ahead of herself. "That is of course if you are willing to let them learn magic of course?" She said this in a questioning tone. That immediately set Harry and Lily into action.

"Oh please! Can we go mom, dad?"

"We've gotta go! It's magic!"

"It'd be nice to be able to make friends without them thinking we're strange or hiding something!"

"It's _magic_, mum! M.A.G.I.C. magic!"

Uncle Michael exchanged a look with his wife after the two of them quieted down and began simply staring at the two of them with puppy dog eyes. "Well we'd still like to talk about it, but little Lily brings up a good point. They would be better off around other kids that could do stuff like them. Is there any chance we could schedule another meeting between us?"

"I believe that could be arranged, yes. Usually I or one of the other Professors at Hogwarts will come around to escort the Muggle-born families to Diagon Alley the first time. Perhaps we can talk more there?"

"That sounds like it would work out well," Uncle Michael agreed, laughing as Harry and Lily cheered. He checked his calendar for an acceptable date that Professor McGonagall could return. After all that was sorted out, Professor McGonagall turned to look at the two children.

"Now, make sure you're watching closely," she said to them. Harry was certain that he saw the Professor wink at him and Lily. And then she turned on her heel and disappeared with a loud _pop._ Harry eyes grew wide. Lily turned to him, eyes shining with glee and excitement.

"Magic is so cool!"

* * *

**A/n: Its a shorter chapter than I typically write but I didn't want to go straight into Diagon Alley, where of course we at least meet James Potter for the first time. I hope that you guys caught that Aunt Petunia is also Lily's aunt in this story. That's mainly because I didn't want to deal with Young Petunia at all, but also because I wanted to give Harry a little bit of grief while he tries to sort out the two timelines although I truthfully won't do much with that either. **

**Yes, If you were wondering, I played the memory charm game where Harry already had memories of being friends slash "cousins" with Lily even though he hadn't actually done it. I also played the memory charm game with anyone the Evan's family so that it would seem that Harry fit in well with them even though Lily's "Aunt Lily" never actually existed. It was just wish magic working its... well magic!**

**No, Harry will not actually learn Lily and James are supposed to be his parents. Yes, Voldemort will be an issue. Maybe not immediately and Harry, the Marauders, Lily probably won't really come into direct contact ever but he'll be around causing the wizarding world problems.**

**Any other q's?**

**X's and O's **

**MagicalBackwave**

**PS. My main focus will still probably be A Muggle Side of Things but I'll work on this when I'm having trouble writing that story.**


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